Radiohead
Hail To The Thief
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For $13.28

The five to fourteen second montage of putting a new CD into its home is exhilarating- when it’s the new album from Radiohead, your perpetually drooling heart beats like you’re Martha Stewart. So lock your door, whip your speakers like horses and get lost in Hail To The Thief, because like every Radiohead album, it’s an awfully entertaining maze.

“2 + 2 = 5” starts with an ominous guitar lick that combines with some techno blips and skips to back Thom Yorke’s familiar falsetto- tender yet tortured. It then mutates into a insane, swinging funkout with ferocious drumming and eurotrash synthesizers. Despite its rather vulgar ending, “2 + 2 = 5” sounds less a song than a foreboding as the group wastes no time presenting one of the themes of the album- abuse of power: “Are you such a dreamer?/To put the world to rights?”. But despite what you read in many reviews, this isn’t a political album. As always, the music of Radiohead examines failure, frustration, paranoia, inexpressibility (sure guys) and emotional fragility in a whirlwind of mellifluous rapture. It takes a look at our bad parts. And the music is so good… well, somehow they make you like what you see although you get the feeling they almost don’t want to.

I think I heard “Sit Down. Stand Up.” when I read 1984. The lyrics have a subjugated Orwellian tone: “Sit down./Stand up./Walk into./The jaws of hell./Anytime./Anytime./We can wipe you out.” The melody is peculiar and eerie with electronic drum patterns, more blips and wonderful texture against Yorke’s dulcet, reproachful voice like feathers against a robin’s lame wing. Chaos ensues, an eruption of electronic frenzy with Yorke murmuring “the raindrops” as computers wage war. Somewhere in the middle of all this you remember that Radiohead only gets better with each listen.

“Sail To The Moon” is soporific but finds such lucidity it’s like knowing you’re in a dream. With entrancing piano chords and a nurturing guitar it occurred to me that Yorke just might always feel this way.

“Backdrifts” is an automated account of infirmity with lyrics like “We’re rotten fruit/We’re damaged goods” and “One gust and we will probably crumble.” It’s fairly predictable, but call it a warm up for the truly superlative next few tracks.

“Go To Sleep” is probably the album’s best, an instant gem that details human complacency to the band’s catchiest guitar riff since “High And Dry” from The Bends, but with much more meaning and surprising funk. Yorke addresses monotony and crippling restraint: “Something big is gonna happen/Over my dead body.” The guitar in this one makes you nod your head, close your eyes, think of something fetching, celestial, the music is water for speech, shade for eyes, sleep for mind. Just past the opening riff of “Go To Sleep” is where this album becomes officially exempt from being called a disappointment.

“Where I End And You Begin.” changes the musical direction but maintains the quality, is a mind bending trip guided by the perhaps unheralded rhythm section. Drums and bass weave somber calamity, wavy techno echoes cite lost time, passing time, vacant people. The song never goes anywhere, but it doesn’t need to. It’s mesmerizing. Radiohead might have its best one-two punch since “Airbag” and “Paranoid Android” from OK Computer.

There are too many highlights on this album to specify so I’ll get to the single. “There There” has a surefire guitar riff, sonorous tribal percussions and an arresting piece of philosophy within its chorus- “Just because you feel it/doesn’t mean it’s there.” The tempo kicks up a notch, throw in another guitar (and the usual perfect layering by producer Nigel Goodrich) and the song ends with ineffable musical penetration as Yorke wails “We are accidents/Waiting to happen” in a crescendo of apocalyptic swell.

“A Punchup at a Wedding” paints a jazzy picture of conflict with a mysterious or maybe unidentifiable instigator- God, fate, and the individual, whatever; bass marries a mellow piano groove and directs an engaging five minute dig into the subject of disappointment.

“A Wolf At The Door” is the closer, an outcry against limit, redundant discord, human listlessness and apathy… in case you weren’t listening to the previous thirteen tracks. Yorke exorcizes his universal demons to a simple guitar riff with busy, punctual drumming and belts out a typically disdainful rant against smugness: “Someone else is gonna come and clean it up/Born and raised for the job/Someone always does.”

I wouldn’t call this a rock album. It’s hard to call this album anything except different and remarkable. You know how it goes- they do whatever the fuck they want, don’t alienate anyone, sell millions of records, baffle and impress every critic… so just go out, buy it and listen to it repeatedly. And you will understand.

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